Excerpts:

'… the blue van smashed into the bike from the left. It hurled us across to the central reservation, and I ended up wedged under the bike with petrol pouring out of the carburettors onto my legs. It happened in an instant, and after a long moment of stunned silence, suddenly all my senses were working on full power. The reeking petrol was stinging my skin through my trousers. The earth and grass by my nose, heated by the midday sun, smelt dry and held the tang of pollution. On the other side of the reservation cars sped past, just by my head. I could hear them and feel their draft, but trapped under the bike I couldn’t twist enough to see them or get further away.
The first three people to get to me roared up on bikes. They were Australian Hell’s Angels, ...

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... There didn’t seem to be any system. The traffic appeared to have no rules other than ‘go forward somehow’. Battered Ambassadors heaved their heavy rounded bodies forward, lumbering around potholes. Three-wheeler rickshaws buzzed like demented flies, darting and ducking past the other road users. Big, beaten up buses belched clouds of smoke over everyone, and bullied their way along with a rather solid superiority. Their windows were decorated with shiny pictures of the gods Ganesh and Shiva or fat, non-smiling Buddhas. They had glittery tassels hanging and swinging like some sort of freak belly dance as the bus thumped through yet another hole. Garlands of bright orange marigolds framed the windows, and bold signs stated warnings and religious confidence. ‘Sound Horn Please’ and ‘God Is With Me’. Big Tata trucks, subservient only to the almost kamikaze behaviour of the buses, arrogantly elbowed their way through the mess. Only fools, buses and cows got in their way. People-power rickshaws scuttled their sweaty way through the chaos, battling for tiny spaces. The rickshaw men looking wide-eyed at the constant mash of ever-changing threats, all of which had the power to crush them and their passengers out of existence as one would do with an irritating bug. Cyclists were next down the food chain, with pedestrians being the lowest form of life. The latter though, still had to cross the street and did so with a combination of fatalism and pro-rugby agility as they handed off cars in their dash from one side to the other. The amazing thing was that it all seemed to work, until a cow got in the way that is. Cows are holy and know that they can get away with anything, so they did. They would aimlessly wander out into the snarling mess of the traffic, and the ‘flow’ really did somehow miraculously part for them. Perhaps in a past life Babu had been a cow, or perhaps, living on the taxi driver’s edge of life he was already dreaming of the form he would like to take in the next one. ...

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... He left me sitting knackered on my bike, like a mini island amidst flowing chaos, while he rode round the beat-up desperate-looking border town of Rauxul Bazar. The buildings were ramshackle and though most had been painted at some time, all were stained by dripping rusty water, mud splashes and years of collected grime. Dodgy characters slouched around in doorways, looking like faded, timeworn opportunists that were down on their quota of opportunities. Garish advertising posters hung, either in tatters from the walls, or flapped gently in the listless breeze. Mangy scabby dogs slunk scavenging hopefully for a meal, from one rubbish pile to the next. Penny-sized black flies buzzed like miniature bomber planes from piles of shit in the street, to land on chunks of meat that hung under the faded awnings of the food stalls. Biting midges clustered around the moisture of children’s snotty running noses and rusting, wrecked, cannibalised trucks and cars lay by the roadsides. Even the holy cows looked as if they had been mentally afflicted by the dodgy air of this border town. ...

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... We lunched on dahl, chapattis and chai at a truck stop – the more we took breaks at truck stops, the more I liked them. There were times when the usual overlanding fare of peanuts and raisins held no attraction whatsoever – nor did our lukewarm, odd-tasting water. Then we saw one, a road side cafe. Across some tree branches that had been machete’d roughly to size, strips of old sacking were strung to keep the dry, grit-laden breeze off the turbaned truck drivers. They were sitting or lying in the flapping shade on charpoys, bed-like affairs with wooden frames upon which a rough netting of sisal string is woven. The ground beneath the charpoys seemed to be layered with generations of spit, betel nut juice, old nails, bits of wire and washers. The air was full of the scents of spilt diesel, curried lentils, fresh baking chapattis and wood smoke. The fire in front of the cafe was loaded with a vast urn of bubbling chai. ...

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... The first checkpoint away from the border wouldn’t let us through. “It is too dangerous for you to be travelling at night in this area,” the olive-green clad soldiers told us authoritatively. “You park there. You go in morning.” No sooner had we settled down, bodged a repair on the skylight and had prepared dinner, when another group of soldiers marched across to bang impatiently on the bus door. “You no stay here! You go now!” the one in charge shouted at us. His face was reddened and spittle was flying from his mouth as he shouted and stamped his foot like a petulant child overdosing on power. The soldiers with him all had their guns pointing at us and looked as if they were itching to try them out. The head soldier’s angry enthusiasm was infecting them and they appeared to be more like a mob than a unit of a nation’s army. Most of them looked like teenagers in uniforms they’d borrowed from their fathers, and I couldn’t see one who looked as if he was safe handling a gun. ...

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